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The Academy of American Poets is the largest membership-based nonprofit organization fostering an appreciation for contemporary poetry and supporting American poets. For over three generations, the Academy has connected millions of people to great poetry through programs such as National Poetry Month, the largest literary celebration in the world; Poets.org, the Academy’s popular website; American Poets, a biannual literary journal; and an annual series of poetry readings and special events. Since its founding, the Academy has awarded more money to poets than any other organization.

What They Found In the Diving Bell

Traci Brimhall

The first time I saw my mother, she'd been dead
fourteen years and came as a ghost in the mirror,
plucking the hair beneath her arms, and humming
a bossa nova. She lotioned her chapped heels
and padded her bra as if she were alive in the old way.
She said I was born with my cord wrapped
around my neck like a rosary, and she knew God,
the doomed father of her days, wanted us both.
Before midnight she plaited my hair, hemmed my skirt,
sang lullabies she'd learned on the other side of the flood.
She lifted her dress to show her bones shedding light
on a stillborn fetus accidentally raptured into her ribs.
She said she'd choose her death again, obey any pain
heaven gave her. Years ago she watched a man ride
a diving bell to the bottom of the Amazon to face
the mysteries God had placed there. The chain broke,
and they pulled him to the surface smiling, stiff, refusing
to open his fists. They broke and unpeeled his fingers.
No one wept or fought to hold it. She covered her eyes
so she wouldn't see what God, in his innocence, had done.

by this poet

We crawl through the tall grass and idle light,
our chests against the earth so we can hear the river
underground. Our backs carry rotting wood and books
that hold no stories of damnation or miracles.
One day as we listen for water, we find a beekeeper—
one eye pearled by a cataract, the other cut out by

Before she died, my mother told meI’d make the monster that would kill me,so I knew this was someone else’s deathcreeping into my field, butchering my cow.I recognized its lone eye and two mouths.Perhaps it mistook the lowing for the callof its own kind. I didn’t mind the heifer